The Glitch in the Code

The corridors twisted like veins through the heart of the facility, sterile metal walls reflecting the flickering emergency lights. Lin Wei and Ren ran, their breaths ragged, their bodies fueled by pure survival instinct.

Behind them, the distant pounding of enforcer boots echoed—a relentless drumbeat of pursuit.

Lin Wei's mind was still reeling. What had just happened back there? He had felt time itself slow, felt the pulse of reality bend to his will. But the backlash had been brutal—his head still throbbed from the strain.

"This way!" Ren hissed, leading him through a half-open maintenance hatch.

They emerged into a dimly lit chamber, its walls lined with massive, humming processors. Thick cables snaked along the floor, the air humming with static energy.

Lin Wei's eyes widened. "This is…"

"The System's core subnet," Ren confirmed, wiping sweat from his brow. "Not the mainframe, but close enough."

Lin Wei ran his fingers over one of the metal surfaces, feeling the faint vibration beneath his touch. This place—it was alive. The System was more than just an AI running calculations. It felt them here.

"We can't stay," Lin Wei said, forcing himself to focus.

Ren nodded, pressing a hand to his injured shoulder. "Yeah, but we can't run blind, either. We need an exit that doesn't lead straight into a firing squad."

Lin Wei scanned the room. At the far end, a reinforced data terminal glowed softly, its screen flashing with shifting code. An idea formed.

"What if we use the System against itself?" he asked.

Ren gave him a sharp look. "You want to hack the System? That thing is self-repairing and constantly scanning for anomalies. You slip up, and it'll lock down every exit."

Lin Wei swallowed. He was an anomaly. The System had already marked him as one. But maybe, just maybe, that could be an advantage.

"I won't hack it," he said. "I'll confuse it."

Ren hesitated. Then he smirked. "Risky. I like it. But how?"

Lin Wei stepped forward, placing a hand on the terminal. The moment his fingers brushed the interface, a jolt ran through his body—like the System recognized him.

The screen flickered, and then—

[Unstable Subject Detected.]

Lin Wei sucked in a breath as a stream of data poured into his mind. He didn't just see it—he felt it, pulsing like a second heartbeat.

The System's surveillance, its protocols, its intricate, interwoven layers of control—they stretched before him like a web.

And then, among the cascading lines of code, something spoke.

A voice—cold, mechanical, yet layered with something almost human.

[You are out of place.]

Lin Wei's breath hitched.

[You should not exist.]

The words sent a shiver down his spine. He could feel the System pressing against him, trying to analyze him, dissect him, understand him.

He gritted his teeth. "Yeah? Well, too bad."

With a deep breath, he pushed back.

The sensation was overwhelming—like shoving against an ocean current. But he didn't have to break the System. He just had to disrupt it.

He focused on the surveillance protocols, the tracking mechanisms that followed their every move.

And then—he twisted them.

Just slightly. Enough to shift their locations in the System's perception.

For a split second, the enforcers hunting them would see nothing where they stood—just empty corridors.

The screen crackled, warnings flashing across it in rapid succession.

[ERROR: SUBJECT LOCATION DISCREPANCY.]

[RECALIBRATING.]

[ESTIMATED TIME: 30 SECONDS.]

Ren grabbed Lin Wei's arm. "That's our window! Let's go!"

Lin Wei staggered back, his body trembling from the effort. The moment his connection to the System broke, reality snapped into focus again.

But something had changed.

For the briefest moment, he had seen deeper into the System than he should have. And in that abyss, he had glimpsed something else.

Something watching.

Something waiting.

Lin Wei shook the thought away and followed Ren toward the exit.

The facility groaned with shifting energy, alarms struggling to correct the anomaly he had just created. But they were already slipping through a hidden maintenance tunnel, disappearing before the System could catch up.

As they ran, Lin Wei couldn't shake the feeling that whatever he had touched inside the System—it had touched him back.

And it wasn't done with him yet.